Unit 66 & 67 - Basic Animation

After looking at the text, fonts and the material editor again Chris showed us the basics of animation in 3DS Max. The Auto Key function, how to increase frames, how to save and to view in a AVI video format. In the morning session we continued with the text and made animations with it. Starting with the Auto Key, we used basic tools like rotate, move and re-size to have the object look like it's doing something. Once happy we used the Auto Key to stop the animation, my first animation had 7 segments in it with in a 100 frames limit. This let me play around with it a bit and here it is, my first one.

In the afternoon Chris let us do... with in reason :) what ever we wanted with the animation functions in Max, my work turned out garbage. One fatal reason, I didn't know you couldn't place objects in to a animation late, all the elements need to be in placed before using the Auto Key and the functions. If you do it like I originally did, only the original objects animation will work and the rest don't do anything at all. This cost me around 40 minutes and in turn trashed the end product, at least I know for next time what to do. My idea was to have my detailed car which is still unfinished but it isn't that important to complete but anyway getting back on task, to have the car animate like it's driving around a circuit. I had the car animated but not the cameras or a basic scene i.e. a track the car runs on. Anyway it bombed big time and I just did a extremely short animation of the car driving by to finish the afternoon task, my first animation with the text is a load better as it's actually doing something.

For some reason I'm having technical issues with the car animation, it's only 140kb big and it's messing around. ¬ ¬ What I've discovered from looking at the file is it's only 1 second long and it only worked with a bug fix through VLC player, so the video is bugged and I tried modifying it with Windows Movie Maker but it doesn't like the file either. It definitely bombed big time. :)

Unit 66 & 67 - Text, Fonts and Material Editor

Very late post, sorry about that... distractions and all that. Last Wednesday Chris showed us how to make 2D text (one of the spline options) and turn it in to a 3D object. I guess you would have to extrude the 2D text by making it in to a editable mesh then select each poly before extruding and I'd guessed correctly, this made the text in to a 3D object. For mine I used Arial Black, one of my favourite fonts and the colour red, my favourite colour. The first two screenies are of the original then we looked at preloaded textures on Max. I used wood, perlin, planet and dent for my textures and make one with perlin and planet mixed. Here is the images of my work.

Unit 19 - Desktop Image Development

Hand drawn image before it was scanned on to the computer. Annotations coming in a update to my google docs PowerPoint presentation.

First Photoshop of my desktop image, again annotations coming in document update.

Finished design just missing one element, the bottom left side. This is were the desktop icons will go.

Finished desktop image with all elements included, enough space for all desktop icons and start menu bar.

Unit 33 - Examples of Animation

Music Videos





Advertising





Feature Films





TV Programmes





Games





Digital Exhibition 

Unit 66 & 67 - Basic and Detailed Car Model

 This lesson of 3D with Chris we developed a basic car using box modeling. With this we started with a standard box and then used a editable mesh to modify the the vehicle to look good, with this we used the vertexes, faces, edges and polygons to customize are vehicle individually. Editing the height of the roof, bonnet of the car and the rear end. I tweaked these areas and then added a bumper on the front and rear. Chris showed us some cool techniques with the extrude and scale tools to modify the lights of the car. I think it's really interesting using these tools to develop the intricate parts of cars, I will be using this tool to develop my future projects. Cylinders for the wheels, I had a few problems with this but in the end I understood my errors and knew what I did wrong. Once this was done we tried the material editor to add cars to the vehicle, customize the gloss and other features to effect the car's paint. Furthermore I added a light blue and turned the opacity down to have a window like effect to the car. Here is the finished piece of the basic car.

For my detailed car I used the same techniques but wasn't about to finish the model so hopefully I'll be able to complete it another day and post it in this one as an update. I didn't get a screeny of the work in progress either unfortunately.

Final piece is to draw a comparison to a professional piece of work to my own first design, I would of done the same for my completed detailed version as well.

As you can see the detail of this car; the Ferrari 458 Italia on Gran Turismo 5 is of the highest quality. the detail in the lighting, gloss, intricate parts are so so good it almost makes the eyes bleed. the blear on the tires, tarmac adds to the realism. It's very hard to draw a comparison to this piece as it's a work of art. All I can say is the initial model of my car did start from the ground up, a box and now does look like a vehicle. The lights on my car in my opinion look very good and with more time and skills I could look like the model on display here from polyphony digital.

PSD - Equality & Diversity / Examples of Logos

Equality & Diversity

In PSD for the last few weeks now we have been looking at and celebrating the equality and diversity of the world, our group and ourselves. This week Chris wanted to mixed this celebration with important skills which will be useful to us in the next few years. Chris picked a image from the internet to build upon. This image would be a small resolution image that we would improve individually. This is the image he chose; 

With the chosen image we was shown the pen tool, Chris said this tool will be important for proper assignment and project work in the future. We had increased the image size even more which also make the resolution of the image worse, using the pen tool we highlight around the hands in the middle, some students did the outer rings as well. The pen tool make the image quality much better. We deleted the original and used the new penned overlay as the background. With this I mixed some of the features to give the hands some cool effects. Then I placed a globe behind the hands to represent the world to celebrate Equality and Diversity. I used the same feature and effect as the hands for the globe. Added a black picture frame to surround the image and a blue colour background as blue is a peaceful colour. Here is the finished result;

Examples of Logos

For me logos have to look cool, easy to recognize and a good use of colour.
I'll explore two good examples and one bad example of logos related to computer and video gaming.

Rockstar games have a cool, simple and adaptive logo, with Rockstar they have colour schemes for each studio they own, this is a unique and great feature. It makes you understand what games are coming from which developer in the Rockstar family. Gamers know what games belong to what developer in general but thanks to this idea it makes it much easier to understand. This happens now as will with 2K, a sister company to Rockstar both owned by Take2 entertainment.

Next up for me would be Konami, the Konami logo has kept with the times in my opinion. The last logo worked well in the 80s, 90s and the early 00s but the current logo is even better. It looks cool, clear and easy to spot. Konami probably knew that the original was getting a bit old and made a real improvement for the modern world. Simple design but brilliant none the less.

Old logo

Modern logo

The Sony Computer Entertainment logo, this for me isn't a really bad logo but it's dated now and for me needs a face lift. The SONY logo at the top is fine but the rest isn't modern at all, it doesn't paint a great picture as it looks like a 80s logo yet it's a 90s logo. The symbol in the middle is poor, it represent nothing in my eyes. The words at the bottom need character and not a basic font. Sony is a world leader in entertainment and yet they have a ugly logo for their computing sector of the brand. I'm a massive Sony fan, I think the company is amazing but this logo is far from amazing, the U.S. gaming side hasn't used this logo this generation to my knowledge.

 

Unit 33 - Animation Techniques

Perception:

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/perception

“The process, act, or faculty of perceiving.”

The ability to recognize there is more than one image, to be able to observe multiple images in one single image.

Image: http://www.ralphverano.com/view_item.php?pid=90075

Persistence of vision:

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Persistence+of+vision

"Persistence of vision is the phenomenon of the eye by which even nanoseconds of exposure to an image result in milliseconds of reaction (sight) from the retina to the optic nerves. This is because persistence of vision depends on chemical transmission of nerve responses, and this biochemical hysteresis is much slower than the light transmission." 

Persistence of vision, this basically is what the eye can see for short periods of time, for example; if you look at a negative image and focus on it, when the image is removed to a blank screen you will see a positive of that image in your eyes. Another example would be a motion illusion, This is were a image is in motion but it is hard to notice what motion it is in. The dancing woman is a prime example, she is moving clockwise and anticlockwise. You really have to focus to notice the change in direction as it's hard to see, I've only seen the direction change twice in several minutes of viewing the animation. The image is a classic example of persistence of vision.

Image: http://www.webanswers.com/post-images/6/6D/16225E54-FBCC-1022-390310F1894CDE83.jpg 

Frame rate:

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/frame+rate

"Frame rate, or frame frequency, is the measurement of the frequency (rate) at which an imaging device produces unique consecutive images called frames. The term applies equally well to computer graphics, video cameras, film cameras, and motion capture systems. Frame rate is most often expressed in frames per second (FPS) and in monitors as Hertz (Hz)."

Frames is a sequence of images at a rate, these images produce a constant picture. This gives the impression of motion in the picture. To give a good impression of a motion picture the frames per second (FPS) has to be constant and not lagging. 


Flicker Fusion Threshold:

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Flicker+Fusion+Threshold

"The flicker fusion threshold (or flicker fusion rate) is a concept in the psychophysics of vision. It is defined as the frequency at which an intermittent light stimulus appears to be completely steady to the observer (this article centers around human observers). Flicker fusion threshold is related to persistence of vision."

The flicker fusion threshold is about the amount of FPS you see, the threshold naturally for most entertainment services would be 30 FPS, This is above the minimum threshold which is 24 FPS. Below this number the human eye can notice latency in the picture quality and above the picture will look smooth. For computer and video gaming the standard of frames is usually 30-60 FPS. On a high end gaming PC frames can be in the hundreds depending on the title.

Unit 65 - Rollover Buttons with Rob

Last weeks lesson with Rob he showed the group how to make basic rollover buttons, This week he showed us a bit more, he had us make our new rollover buttons look more detailed and unique. But first he wanted us to design a more detailed version of a flash button using photoshop, we played around with the setting to make the button look more realistic and to make it have a shadow before the cursor moved over it. This is how mine turned out.

I'm pretty happy with these buttons, it worked will. After making them on photoshop we created a scene on flash to make the button have it's rollover effect. I was pretty pleased.

After completing the first button we started making our second button on photoshop. This button was designed to be more detailed and have a lot more effects. Layers were used to created a scene within the button, placed to give the button more character. I used a custom brush for the background which looks like the ubisoft logo in my opinion but that doesn't matter and used the colour green to make it standout. I added similar effects from the first button to the second to make the button look like it was physically press able. I added one of my favourite gaming characters ever to be the centre piece of my button, Solid Snake. removed the colour to make him blend in with the scene more and turned down the opacity to make him slightly visible. After that we make a custom effect using another layer, we created a very small L shaped icon to have a grid effect on the button, like the pixel lines you see on smart phones. This made the button look even more realistic and I loved this layer effect. Last but no least we added a little shine to the button, like what you on iphone apps, a small semi-circle on top of the icons that give it a 3D effect, then I moved it under some of the layers.

Overall I'm seriously happy with how it turned out, it looks realistic and I could see it looking good on a smart phone screen. A really enjoyable lesson with Rob and all the tasks was gone.